move Premium, upgrade to Pro, w/o clean install?

[Silver7]

1) I want to move Win 7 Home Premium from my desktop to my netbook.
2) I want to put Win 7 Professional on my desktop, hopefully without having to start from scratch.

I know if I buy Win 7 Pro, I can do an in-place upgrade on my desktop, but then my CD key for Home Premium may not work when I go to put it on my netbook??? What do you think?

 

[gregrocker]

What I have done which works is to save a Win7 Backup Image of the installation which you wish to copy, then reimage it onto the target machine.

When it starts up, it will change out all of the drivers in quite a show punctuated by requests for restart.

Then go to the Computer>Activation link and Change Product Key, reinstall your Product key. It will likely require you to make a robo call to MS to trade numbers which deactivate the key on the old hardware installation and activate it on the new one.

In the rare event you need to speak with an agent, tell them that you reinstalled it to your netbook, with no mention of copying or cloning because I've found MS is allergic to these terms.

Now run a repair install (upgrade over itself) to remove the key from your original Premium which will give you 30 days to Upgrade to Pro. Upgrade only needs to see any OS to accept key,

Or use the popular workaround to install Pro Upgrade to deleted Premium's formatted HD: http://community.winsupersite.com/b...-windows-7-with-upgrade-media-the-answer.aspx

 

[Silver7]

My netbook has a 16GB SSD, so I need to do a clean install and then make changes which are appropriate for a slow processor and a small SSD.

I think I'll install Home Premium on the netbook and activate it. Then do an in-place upgrade on my desktop using my new retail Win 7 Professional key.